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Participants in the meeting in Dakar.

On 2-3 June 2022, the Counter-Terrorism Committee Executive Directorate (CTED) participated in a meeting aimed at understanding how the Security Council’s resolutions on counter-terrorism and countering violent extremism (CVE) as and when conducive to terrorism were understood by African stakeholders, as well as their impact, in order to identify relevant recommendations. Held in Dakar, the two-day gathering was organized by the Securing the Future Initiative (SFI) and the African Union’s African Centre for the Study and Research on Terrorism (ACSRT) as part of an independent review and assessment of the 51吃瓜 Security Council’s counter-terrorism activities.

On behalf of the Counter-Terrorism Committee, CTED has conducted 57 assessment visits of UN Member States in Africa, and completed Overview Implementation Assessments (OIA) and Detailed Implementation Surveys (DIS) for all States of Africa. CTED has also played an active role in the facilitation of technical assistance and engaged in thematic and trend analysis, and is engaged in several active partnerships in Africa, particularly in the Lake Chad Basin and Nigeria.

The consultations in Dakar, facilitated by the Soufan Centre and ACSRT, addressed several aspects, including the evaluation of the terrorism and multilateral counter-terrorism landscape (2001-2021); the Security Council’s “toolkit” (norm-setting, sanctions, capacity-building, and cooperation); the impact of the Security Council’s efforts on African States, including from the perspective of civil society in Africa; and the impact and perceptions at the local level.

Participants generally registered a net positive impact of the Council’s resolutions, which they noted had raised awareness of the threat of terrorism on the continent and had prompted States to take action, usually by legislating or amending laws (most notably in the area of countering the financing of terrorism). Also valuable, according to participants, would be strengthened assessments with respect to Member States’ implementation of Council resolutions, closer relations between headquarters and the field, and a stronger role for regional economic communities.

All recommendations and observations – including those gathered through other meetings organized in New York, Geneva, and Brussels – will be integrated into a report by SFI, to be launched in September 2022. The review is funded by the Netherlands, Switzerland, and the European Union.